Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This has to be the strangest matter of public importance ever brought before this House. It is a very strange issue to debate, this issue of an unelected committee. I was really quite perplexed about what the debate might be about. But I have listened carefully. I listened in particular to the member for Flinders talking about the Boston Tea Party and other things. I cannot really understand it. This parliament is elected. The government is elected. Any committee report comes to us. The committee recommends things to us. It is subordinate to this parliament, to the democratic process, to the national interest, in the same way that every other institution set up by this parliament is—in the same way that the Reserve Bank, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and other bodies and authorities set up under Australian law are always subordinate to this parliament.

I could not work out what we would be debating for such a length of time, but I now realise it is the Boston Tea Party; it is this attempt to conjure up a dark Orwellian fantasy in which we are ruled not by the parliament, not by democracy, but by some unelected body tucked away somewhere. This is the Liberal Party's new politics. It is an attempt to undermine this parliament's legitimacy, it is an attempt to undermine the policy intent of the government and it is an attempt to appeal to the extremists and fruitcakes who now populate the activist base of the coalition.

The first signs of this appeared in February of last year, when Tony Abbott, just two days after launching his climate change policy, met with Lord Monckton, a British lord. He met with him in secret. The member for Warringah refused to let us know what it was all about, but Lord Monckton told us what it was all about. He said that the proponents of climate change wanted to establish a world government that would shut down democracy worldwide. We can see that there are elements of that view in the MPI today. What else did Lord Monckton say after that meeting? Lord Monckton added:

… that Mr Abbott's policies to encourage tree planting and to help industry save energy would help address ''genuine'' environmental problems.

''It is indeed better to have a policy which nods to the issue of climate change for those who still believe, and there are some diehards who still believe, that fixes some of the genuine environment issues that are a lot cheaper than the enormous amounts—

of money—

diverted to this ridiculous climate thing,'' Lord Monckton said.

He said that it could be turned off if necessary. That is one of the things Lord Monckton said.

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